With $662 million in ticket sales, Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick surpassed Titanic as the seventh-biggest picture ever at the US box office this weekend.
The sequel, which is currently in its eleventh week of release, has gained $7 million to its total and has already surpassed James Cameron’s 1997 disaster by $3 million, grossing $659 million.
While Titanic is currently in eighth position, Top Gun is closing in on sixth place Avengers: Infinity War with $678 million and Black Panther with $700 million in movie office revenues.
Films with higher grossing totals, such as Avatar, Spiderman: No Way Home, Avengers: Endgame, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, are unlikely to be exceeded, however Top Gun: Maverick may move up to fifth place.
Top Gun is just the 12th film in history to gross more than $600 million in the United States.
Internationally, it ranks third among the studio’s highest-grossing titles of all time.
Meanwhile, the film is the largest Paramount live action film ever in 28 international territories, including France, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
Notably, this is Tom Cruise’s first $1 billion picture in his decades-long career.
The film was meant to be released in June 2020, but Paramount delayed it until more fans could return after the epidemic lockdowns.
Top Lifetime Earnings
The Force Awakens ($936 million)
Avengers: Endgame ($853 million)
Spider-Man: Far From Home ($804 million)
Avatar ($760 million)
Black Panther ($700 million)
The Avengers: Infinity War ($678 million)
Top Gun: Maverick ($662 million)
Titanic ($659 million)
Jurassic World ($653 million)
The Avengers ($623 million)
Cruise’s Top Gun series dominated the worldwide cinema market in both 1986 and 2022, but the actor has been a real-life licensed pilot since 1994.
While the aircraft were piloted by someone else in the first film, the actor was in command in the latest sequel, Top Gun: Maverick.
The film’s performers undertook months of flight instruction in preparation for the part, and they flew themselves for the sequences.
While Tom was not permitted to fly an actual F-18 aircraft, he was the pilot of various planes throughout the film and even had to work out his own camera angles while in the plane, since there was no room for a director inside.
The Tinseltown icon is hoping to return to the top of the box office with a pair of high-profile sequels he’s working on, reprising his role as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part One and Part Two.
The first installment of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning will be released in cinemas in July of next year.
The domestic film office has made an amazing comeback in recent months, propelled by bestsellers like Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World: Dominion. The bad news for cinemas is that Brad Pitt’s Bullet Train, which opens this weekend, is the final big-budget, major studio picture of the summer, and there’s going to be a true desert of populist entertainment.
Privately, studio execs and theater owners predict there won’t be another blockbuster until Black Panther: Wakanda Forever arrives in mid-November.
That’s a long time to wait, especially for an exhibition business already reeling from the aftereffects of COVID closures and lower attendance.